PREPARING TO LEAVE THE ALLOTMENT FOR A WEEK! / ALLOTMENT GARDENING FOR BEGINNERS

Guys, welcome back to my allotment diaries. My name is Emma, these are my allotment diaries. I'm here on my allotment plot today. I'd love for you to subscribe to my channel if you're new to my channel. Apparently 55% of you who watch these videos are not subscribed to my YouTube channel and it makes a massive, massive difference the more subscribers I get. YouTube recommends my videos more and it just helps me out, helps me to know what's working, what's not. So if you're not subscribed and you love my videos, I would love for you to hit that subscribe button. It only takes five minutes. Five minutes? It takes like five seconds to hit the button so please, please do that if you haven't already. I will be eternally grateful. I don't really know why I'm here today because I have a massive, massive headache. I've had a headache since yesterday morning but I came down anyway. I'm totally not dressed for the allotment plot at all but I just felt compelled to come down here. I'm actually, while you're watching this, I'm currently camping on holiday so hopefully what I do today will help keep my plot in check for when I come back, fingers crossed day. I did see a massive pile of wood chip when I first came in and I'm desperate to go and get my hands on some and I know my head is absolutely killing me but I feel like I'm just gonna do it anyway because that's just what I'm like. So let's do that first. Let's go and get some wood chip. I love wood chip. It's not the best quality wood chip today because it's mainly full of leaves which is gonna really decompose but I'm only using it for my path so hopefully it'll be okay for that. But yeah, there's a lot of leaves in here so it's not brilliant But it's free, so I'm not going to complain too much. So I'm thinking of putting it over here and making my little pathway just to stop all of those weeds coming up again. Can you see how inappropriately dressed I am for today's out antics? Like why am I wearing a dress? I wasn't planning on coming here I promise and I changed my mind last minute and thought let's just rock up and I thought I'll just, I'll just like flounce about and do little pottering jobs and now here I am like lugging a wheelbarrow full of wood chip. Allotment life eh? So this is now my new path. If you remember behind the raspberry canes here all the weeds were coming up really badly so I really needed to do something about that and I think putting a path down there is probably the most logical thing. So we've got the old weed membrane underneath, membrane or membrane, I don't know, anyway it's underneath and then the wood chip on the top. That's how I have made all of my pathways in my allotment plot. There's some of it's ground sheet so, some of it's ground sheet like that but I don't like it because all the plastic comes off and it goes everywhere. But that's all I had at the time when I made my plot so I'm sort of working with it if you know what I mean and just doing my best. Now I'm using that black stuff which is a bit more eco-friendly I think. So that is just how I've made all of my pathways on my plot. You basically make sure it's flat, get rid of as many weeds as you can, put down the membrane and then put wood chip on top and that's it, it's really good. All the leaves in there will like rot down basically and I'll be left with the wood chip hopefully. And yeah, that's just a really easy way to make paths. That looks good there, I'm happy with that now. I think it looks a lot neater, probably needs a few more wheelbarrow loads of wood chip but I just can't do it right now because my head is killing me. I also did a little bit in front of the polytunnel. Just needed a little bit of a tidy up, I think it looks quite good. It always makes your plot look a lot neater and more organised when you wood chip stuff. So I came to check on those water things that I made and if you don't know what I'm talking about go back and look at my last vlog because I was talking, I was making water things. I don't know what they're called still but basically they're these. So I put a little tiny hole in the lid of this, filled it with water and put it upside down and buried it. The idea is that it drips out water and hopefully it waters the plants around which are currently tomatoes. I don't know if it will work because I think the tomato roots are probably too small to suck it up at the moment but I think it's better than nothing. So when you're watching this I am currently away camping so hopefully it is working but I came back to check on it because I said I was going to check on it before I go so this is me checking on it before I go basically. I don't know what I'm really looking for, that's the problem. I'm not entirely sure what I'd be looking for because I was here the other day and I did water them so I assume that they're sort of okay at the moment. So I don't know what I'm checking for, the point is they've still got water in so they might just do the job. I guess I won't really know till I get back will I? I won't know till I get back from holiday, everything will either be alive or dead. Oh well, what can you do? Some of my dahlias are really struggling with slug and snail damage and other ones are doing really well and not getting damaged at all so it seems that snails have a particular variety of dahlia that they prefer to eat than others which is quite interesting isn't it? I mean it's annoying but it's interesting. So this one for example has not had any slug or snail damage on it at all whatsoever, actually there is slime on it so they've been over it but they've decided that they don't want to eat that one. This one here however has been absolutely munched, I don't even know if he'll come back to life now, he might be dead. And then same with that one over there. So just on the off chance that they do miraculously come back to life while I'm away I'm going to protect them further. I'm going to use, I'm sitting on it, wool, so this is sheep's wool which got sent to me a long time ago and one of the things that this is really good for apparently is preventing slugs and snails because they can't get over it apparently. Feels quite soft to me but I don't know, apparently it works. The other thing is copper mesh. I'm going to put a little bit of copper mesh around them as well and then just see if they grow back. I don't know if dahlias do grow back once they get eaten like that. Do you think this will grow back? I mean I guess there's always a chance that it could throw up another shoot or a leaf or something, there's always a chance it could come back but we'll protect it anyway. I'm also guessing that a lot of the weeds that I've allowed to come out probably aren't helping because they're giving the slugs and snails somewhere to hide so I need to get rid of them. Ah, you've been eaten too. No! So no strawberries yet but I do have a few that will be developing soon which is quite exciting. I can't see any that are anywhere near being done so fingers crossed they don't come into harvest while I'm away because if you give me strawberries when I'm on holiday I'll be really really mad. No, they're just starting to develop so what I did last year was I put all of my strawberries into this pallet planter and got them out of the ground just because the slugs and snails were getting all the strawberries before me so now they're all in these little pallet planters and actually they're doing really well, they seem really happy, they're quite easy to weed and keep on top of all the weeds because they're just in these little boxes and so far they've not sort of dried out because that was my biggest fear. Because obviously with them being in a pallet planter they can't suck up any moisture from the ground so if you don't water them and we have a really dry spell they're going to be in trouble. I'm going to give them a water now, a really good soaking and then hopefully they'll survive for five days. I think they will, I think they will because I think they're invincible. Come on guys, you can do it. Okay, so I think I've done everything I can think to do before I go away, so I've weeded a lot, I've got support on the broad beans, I've watered everything, I've, I've, I mean what more can I do? The only issue that I have and the only thing that I'm really worried about is that at home I've got three Jack B. Little pumpkin plants which are really like over ready to go out, I mean they are massive, I literally can't store them anymore, I don't know where to put them, they're huge, they're falling out their pots. They need to go on this archway but if I put them in before I go away I'm not going to be here to look after them and like water them, protect them and stuff, so they'll sort of be on their own for a whole week and I don't want to plant them out and then be like I'm not going to see you for a week now, yeah, so you know, it's the crows now. So it's really frustrating because they are huge, I mean if I put him out now, so if I put him out here he'll probably like reach right up to about here now, you know they're massive massive plants and I've done that because last year I had so much trouble with them I thought I'd just grow them really really big, I think they'll be okay but I don't want to put them out just yet, so I've got to figure out a way of sort of looking after them and making sure they don't die, what I should have done is put them out this week, looked after them and then they might have been alright for a week on their own but I didn't do that did I, I didn't do that. Just going to end this vlog by showing you the pond because my goodness, so this year what I did was I completely gutted out this entire pond and I took everything out of it and then I replanted it all because it was just getting so messy and looking so horrible, well now I mean we've got irises, we've got all the buttercups coming up, we've got the pond plants that are all growing. I did sprinkle a load of wildflower seed but I can't see any of it coming up, the only thing I can see coming up is Californian poppies which I love, I'm so happy for them but I can't actually see any other sort of wildflowers coming up but then I wouldn't really know what they look like so I don't know how I can say that and then I've got these little shrubs in here which are getting a little bit covered with weeds but I hope that they sort of get a bit bigger and take over because I want these shrubs around really, that's because that's what I put in, I love that one, it's been covered up by all these flowers and then I just want to show you my absolute favourite thing in this entire pond, I'm so happy that I spent the money because these were expensive, these were not cheap plants, I mean these are about £14.99 and it's my lily pads, I thought I'd killed them but look at them, they've come back to life, I've got three, they're really spreading out, they are so sweet, I just love them, I don't know if I'll ever get a flower from these lily pad ponds but oh my gosh I love them, I feel like I'm in a Disney movie, every time I look at them I feel like I'm in a Disney movie, aren't they beautiful? Also I'm just going to add right here in the vlog, if anyone from my allotment committee is watching, can I please have that allotment plot there because I have asked for it about seven times, I've left three messages on answer phones, I've emailed so many times and no one's got back to me and it is ridiculous, it is literally growing into my shed, like the weeds are insane and I will take it on, I will do a great job, I will do this to that, so please can I just have it, I'm in two minds about just literally working on it and just taking it, just having it, but I don't want someone to then come along and take it and go oh thanks for doing the hard work for me, like what is going on with it, please can I have it? Right I've got to get going, firstly because I wasn't meant to come here today and I just ended up here for some reason in the most inappropriate clothing I think I've ever worn to the allotment plot, but pretty, pretty for the vlog but not very practical, and secondly because my head feels like it's going to explode, I thought getting out here and being in the sunshine and the fresh air would probably help my head, it has and it's done the opposite, I actually feel worse, so I'm going to go home, have a nice cup of tea, have a very very quiet afternoon and I'm sure I'll be fine later on, so thank you so much for watching, I hope you enjoyed it today, leave me a comment below if you have any questions of anything that I did, anything I can help you out with, anything I didn't explain or I just did and you're like what on earth is she doing, and I'll see you again in my next vlog very very soon, I hope you're all having a lovely week, see you later, bye!